I’m skiing in Switzerland at the moment, away from my desk, but this is not an out-of-office automated reply. To tell you the truth, I’m lapping it up. I love pretending I’m glamorous enough to have a chalet on the mountain-side and regular ski holidays, but it’s so far from the klutzty, ice-bruised, rag-tag, borrowed-garments truth that I think I have “accompanying au pair” written across my forehead.

Oh well, may as well make the most of it.

The slopes I’ve had several very close, powder-biting encounters with are Crans-Montana, in the Swiss canton of Valais. I wasn’t familiar with the region previously, so I’ve been trying to do some research at the locally tourist bureau. This is difficult when, judging by the available literature, everyone else’s interested in the area hinge on skiing, golfing, Dolce & Gabbana puffy parkas, Omega watches, Cartier watches, Dior watches (oh yeah… Switzerland… it took me a little while to catch on!)

But anyway – here it goes – five things you possibly didn’t know about Valais.

• Geographically, it seems to be pretty simple to navigate your way to Crans-Montana via Sierre. From France, just follow the Rhône valley up from Chamonix-Mont-Blanc and you could keep on until Milan, Italy, if you didn’t feel inclined to stop.
• Valais is two-thirds French-speaking, plus really “talks the talk” by being the largest wine-making canton in Switzerland.
• Raclette (the cheese) for raclette (the cheesy melting moments dish) originated from Valais. Not that you can forget that fact in Crans village. Every dining establishment seems to want to wow the passing trade with their raclette and the other famous Swiss staple, fondue.
• After his somewhat orchestrating role in blowing up the despised Vendôme Column during the final stages of the 1871 Paris Commune, renowned French Realist movement painter Gustave Courbet spent some of his final years of exile in Valais. While in my humble opinion he was lucky to have escaped the firing squad and with plenty of worse places in which to find himself displaced, Courbet apparently disagreed and essentially drank himself to death.
• And Wikipedia tells me that the canton’s central Rhône valley is one of the drier parts of Switzerland, but paradoxically receives some of the highest levels of precipitation. But that’s all due to the large amount of snow and rain on the peaks.

Well there you go!